Our Alpine Retreat

Every morning, I lift my head from the pillow and gaze through the loosely woven beige curtain that separates me from the enormous window at the front of our tiny flat.

"Dunc, is there snow? Are there any mountains?"
"No, nothing interesting," he says, and I can hear the smirk in his voice.

Every morning, I pull back the curtain to reveal what can only be described as a dream-scape.



We are two young(ish) Australians that have come to Switzerland in hopes of... well, of what? Firstly, after travelling through Europe for eight months, six of which were spent self-sufficient with bicycles, panniers and tenting gear (www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/justmarried), we came to Switzerland in hopes of staying still. Here we have found somewhere exceedingly breath-taking in its beauty, and we can recover from our traveller's fatigue. The pre-requisites were German-speaking, snow-ridden and preferably with mountains. Tick! Tick! Tick!

We had always planned to find work at some point, and now is the right time. While Dunc spends his days having telephone interviews for network engineering positions, studying algorithms and brushing up on his programming skills of days gone by, I am living my dream of having the time to write. I have always wanted to be a novelist, and if ever there was a point in my life where the world of creative writing throws its arms wide open and beckons me in, it must be here, in my little Alpine retreat, with nothing but the mountains to distract me. Oh, and the internet. Strangely enough, my first ever Things-To-Do-Before-I-Die list, created when I was twelve years old, had an entry where I vowed to write a novel in a loft (close enough) above a patisserie (close enough) in Paris (close enough). That's enough close enoughs to bring a smile to my face.

The reasons for writing this blog are multiple. Firstly, we left home nine months ago and, as cycle tourists, kept a blog. Now that we are no longer cycling, we no longer have a blog. This seems to leave a few people (you know who you are!) with a little bit of a hole in their daily voyeuristic escapism. And, of course, this must be a preferable alternative to the bulk-email dispatches of late.

I doubt I will ever have such a chance where I am given the freedom to explore my abilities as a writer. And I plan to revel in it. This blog, however, will not contain any of my 'proper' writing - it will be an escape from that, and a general update on the ways of the world in our little 35 square metre home.